


an unexpected gift

by empires



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Reality, M/M, sad dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 12:04:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5665435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empires/pseuds/empires
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bard falls in love with a mysterious elf, or he will. One day. Be warned, this is an excerpt from the terminally unfinished sad dad classic, "An Unexpected Gift."</p>
            </blockquote>





	an unexpected gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dollylux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/gifts).



> I have this thing about sad dads that is shared by my friends. They are much more talented than I and can express this love in amazing fiction! I can deliver half-finished stories of a very well-plotted idea. How do they even put up with me? 
> 
> If you need a little back story: Thranduil just checked out after his father died and disappears into the wild woods. The council of elves appointed a regent to take his place while his wee son, Legolas, is fostered in Rivendale (does he meet Aragorn there? Probably!). At the time of this fic, Legolas is King of Mirkwood. Less people die at the Battle of the Five Armies but the War of the Ring will still come.

i.  
The goblins attack in the dead of night, when the evening fire dwindles and the slow fall of snow blanket the earth in white silence.

The harsh ringing of battle wakens Bard from his dreamless sleep. He sees the shine of a naked blade above and he rolls from the sleeping furs sword in his right hand, the scabbard in his left. It was forged in the newly kindled dwarven fires and given to Bard on the day of his coronation by Erebor’s returned son, Thorin Oakenshield, the one-eyed king of the dwarves. Yet Bard feels a peal of trepidation sound in his belly for the sword was never his choice. Yet he swings determinedly, glimmering sword meeting the wicked curve of the gobin’s blade. 

“To me! Free men of Dale, to me!” Bard shouts. His guardsmen roar in reply, and though scattered about the small camp, they rally push forward together for that is the way of men. Bard puts down each attack, slays each goblin that runs toward him but another rises in its place and another. Another. The fire dies. The chitinous laughter jackals within the shadows, which swell and menace. They are being overrun.

From the corner of his eye he sees another of his men fall to a black arrow. A trail of blood bubbles from the young guard’s throat, but Bard cannot grieve. He turns aside another sword pushing the spindly body back and pierces it to the ground.

“To me!” he cries, raising his sword high. “To me, free men of Dale!” But no one calls out in response, no one comes to his aid. 

He is alone. 

The goblins turn upon him as one and grin their sharp-toothed grin. They take a step forward, Bard a step back, and so begins a harried chase through the gamboling snow into the darkest edge of Mirkwood.

  


ii.  
It has been nearly a year since Bard was crowned King of Dale. The resurrected kingdom had survived a barren growing season and a long winter rebuilding along the way. Through it all, Bard has struggled to balance the needs of his family, the needs of his people, and foster the alliance forged beneath banners and blood. Yet his days had been hounded by a ceaseless flurry of messages from towns and principalities of Men. Their polite requests and challenges reminded him that the duties of kingship are many. They bid him to renew treaties, encourage trade, and show that he did not simply favor the dwarves and elves as their letters implied. Indeed, some outright stated. 

Diplomacy is a most necessary part of kingship.

After bearing witness to the tumultuous events before and the aftermath of the Battle of the Five Armies, Bard better understands the importance of alliances and friendship, loyalty and love. And in the battle's wake, he has vowed to do right by his people, to build the Kingdom of Dale as a bastion of these same principles. Dale would echo what he’s always believed: faith, trust, and family. If he has to visit some jackdraw to prove that working side by side with elves and dwarves is not only beneficial to men but to all of Middle Earth, he’ll do it and at his own terms. At the first break of winter’s grip, Bard decided he would travel to the lands south of Laketown’s ruins.

Bard remembers his seneschal’s words as chiding. “You would do well to bring a full company. It is befitting a king.”

He remembers his own words as well, foolish now as he rushes through the woods, long branches whipping at his body. “I would travel as befitting the man I am. I go to the southern cities to open trade, renew ties not rattle their purses in a show of power.” He had thought his reasoning sound. The hale and able-bodied men and women needed to continue turning the abandoned settlement into a city and protect the fragile peace. He would take twelve guards into his routine and push through the weather.

How the reluctant king now rues his pride, his unthinking, fish-gutted pride. 

Surrounded by the growing dark, Bard runs. 

  


iii.  
It is not fear that drives Bard’s headlong flight but the need to survive. He crashes through the underbrush, narrowly dodging the saplings and crooked roots that impede the way. He is allowed no quarter, no time to take in a breath of this cold night air or tend to the wounds slicing across his body. The goblins move closer, giving hue and cry for his blood.

He scrambles over an embankment, numb fingers clawing at roots and rocks to aid him. Bows sing and arrows sink into the earth beneath his feet urging him forward. When he reaches the top, Bard glances behind and sees the glare of goblin eyes, luminous orange flames, as they race after him.

Bard turns to set a new pace when a searing pain shoots through him. It is an arrow that's pierced the skin beneath his ribs. He crashes to the ground with a sharp cry. There is pain and then there is _pain_. Bard marks the difference as he lies sprawled and writhing. The shot is deliberate, meant to weaken and wound. He finds it difficult to stand, and so Bard crawls. In the shadows twitch the clicking laughter of the orcs. He cannot lift his head nor can he open his mouth wider than to allow a small sound escape his mouth. Poison. Its grey sizzle clouds through him, and still Bard moves. He crawls along the cold earth, tears spilling from his cheeks, and hopes against hope that he will see the morning. 

Instead, he bears witness to a rare coming of false dawn. It comes from the west, a rush of falling starlight that sharpen into the form of an elf.

Tall as the trees and glowing in the way of their kind, the elf pierces the darkness. To Bard’s shuddering vision, the elf wavers both within and without the world, like the shimmering trails of a falling star. The very earth gives way at the elf's step, forest untwisting, and the air of a vengeful spring heavy in its wake. A great sword unsheathes and Bard would swear the air hums in anticipation as does the earth tremble in thirst of a lightning strike. So too does the elf cut into the goblins, straight and true, splitting the foul bodies as they recklessly attack and giving quiet chase when they run in terror. It is no mere sylvan elf that pursues them, no son of Mirkwood. Bard knows this for has walked beside them. He has dined with their young king and has grown to call him friend. No, even under the turmoil of torturous pain Bard can see that this elf is different, ancient.

The light grows ever brighter as the elf stalks closer, beauteous and bright, growing until it consumes him.

  


iv.  
Bard has always been a part of the water and so his dreams are no different. He and his barge float in a cloudy miasma. Below the decks rock along a cold river that is wide and placid as a lake. His hands are wrapped around the long pole that he spikes into the dark waters and propels his vessel forward. He must return. He must return. He must return _home_. 

Bard pushes the ship, inch by hard-won inch, until his hands bleed and his arms waver. The leaden air chills the wood at his feet and so his scuffling steps become perilous. He can see the moment before he falls and can do nothing but surrender to it. Bard watches as his knees crack on the deck, the thud of the pole to his shoulder, the water rushes to fill the void he leaves in the gray waters. He goes down and down, lungs wet, chilled with certain finality. 

A hand grabs his and hauls him gasping through the ice. He thrashes within the strong arms of another that forces air into his body.

"Your children are safe. Your children are safe," repeats the graven voice against his ear. "You will return to them. I will see to it."

It is a gift, those words, a promise for the future, and Bard finds himself atop the barge again. He is wet and he is bleeding, but he bends to push the pole into the water.

He must return home.

  


v.  
Bard’s wakens to a body wracked with fever, a deep seated fire that burnt through his blood. His eyes are filled in tears, his body bathed in sweat. But there is one truth that he cannot deny. 

“I am alive,” he chokes, throat crackled from disuse. But he is weakened by a pain that flares within him at every breath. Soon his eyes flutter close and he is drawn down into his dreams once again.

The second time Bard wakes the room feels much colder though the fever still whirls through him. He lies upon a dais in a rounded room of stone hewn and carved into long lines that extend to a dizzying height. He cannot see its end and wonders if the soft, illuminating light could reach the room’s end. He turns his head toward its source and gasps for the elf sits on the dais steps beside him, cross-legged and still as a statue. Even in this darkened bower he glows.

The elf is more beautiful than life, long and lean as a whip with skin supple in the ageless grace that mark the first born. His silvered hair swings over one shoulder in a thick plait, his pale lips part as he draws in quiet breaths.

So many questions crowd at Bard’s tongue, but he is loath to break the stillness. Finally, he breaks the silence but not with words. Rather his body shakes and he coughs so terribly loud until his chest rattles with it.

The elf opens his eyes and Bard is struck anew by beauty, by the moonlight in his eyes, the cool austerity of time. He rolls to his knees, a small bowl in hand and holds it forth for Bard to drink from. It is water, sweet and cold. Bard drinks from elven hands and knows he will never be full.


End file.
